


The Imaginary Friend

by New_day



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Creature Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 23:46:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16129175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/New_day/pseuds/New_day
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a boy who had an imaginary friend. He called him the antler-man.





	The Imaginary Friend

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird, experimental story that came out of nowhere, like Hannibal does in this fic. ;)

When Will first sees him, he is lying on the ground.

Another boy is on top of him, tearing at him, screaming: “Give me your money, you fucking weirdo!”

Sometimes Will knows about things other people are going to do, as if he were the one who is going to do them. 

He knows that this boy is going to hurt him really bad.

Will's cheek is sprinkled with the boy's spit.

Will makes a face, disgusted, and suddenly, he is not afraid anymore.

He is just angry, as angry as he has never been before.

“No,” he says.

The boy stares at him as if he can't believe his ears and raises his hand to punch Will in the face.

And that's when Will first sees him.

He is standing above him, looking down at him. 

A creature, with human features, but pitch-black, with antlers on its head.

Will thinks that he should be scared of this creature, but he is not.

For some reason, he knows that the creature is his friend. 

“You can do it. See?” it says in a strange, distorted voice and smiles, and Will smiles back.

“Yes,” he says, “You are right, I can do it.”

And he takes a stone that is lying on the ground and smashes it in the boy's face.

***

“I only ask you one more time, Will,” his father says. “Why did you do it? What's gotten into you? I mean, sometimes it's okay to fight back, but certainly not like that. You could have killed him, Will! Then I'd be visiting you in prison now, is that what you wanted?”

Will shakes his head. “No,” he whispers.

“Then – why? What's wrong with you, Will? You've never been violent before, what made you suddenly smash a stone in this boy's face?”

Will looks at his father, hesitates for a moment and answers softly: “He. He made me do it.”

His father frowns. “He? I didn't know there was somebody else with you. Was it another boy from school?”

Will shakes his head again. “No. It wasn't a boy. It was a...thing. It was like a man and it wasn't. It was black, and there were antlers on its head. And it wanted me to kill the boy.”

His father's face changes, suddenly worried and confused. “I see,” he says, but Will knows that he doesn't.

***

“This- creature, this man with the antlers- when do you see him, Will?”

The woman is looking at him expectantly. 

Will knows she is a psychologist, his father told him. 

His father thinks that Will needs help, because he doesn't believe him.

He doesn't believe that the antler-man, as Will started to call him, is real.

The psychologist seems nice, she has a friendly smile and reminds Will a bit of his mother. 

Maybe she will believe him.

“I see him when I'm angry,” he says. “When somebody is mean and I get really mad at them.”

“And how do you feel, Will? How do you feel when you see him? Are you scared?”

Will shakes his head. “No, I'm not. He's my friend.”

The woman nods. “I see. And what does he do? Does he say something or does he want you to do something?”

Will nods. “Yes,” he says. “He wants me to kill them all. All the mean people.”

***

He is in the hospital for five months.

He still sees the antler-man, but he doesn't tell them anymore.

When Will starts to take the medication, the antler-man becomes blurred, like an old photograph or a reflection in the water.

But he is still there.

“You can do it. See?” he says, but Will shakes his head.

“No, I can't. And I won't. If I do what you want, I'll never get out of here or I will go to prison. And you aren't real anyway. Go away, leave me alone.”

And finally, he does.

The antler-man's image becomes fainter and fainter, until he is transparent, and his voice becomes so distorted that Will can't understand it anymore.

And then, one day, he is gone.

Will cries for a whole day.

“I'm sorry,” he cries. “I'm sorry I told you to leave, I didn't mean it. Don't leave me all alone. Come back. Please.”

But the antler-man doesn't come back.

***

When Will finally leaves the hospital, he doesn't see him again. 

Sometimes, he still misses him, sometimes he wonders if he was real.

When Will gets older, he realizes he wasn't. 

The psychologists and his father were right.

The antler-man was a manifestation of Will's anger and aggression.

An imaginary friend with a macabre twist.

***

Will is a policeman when he finally sees the antler-man again.

A criminal points a gun at Will, and Will knows he is supposed to shoot him with his own gun, but he can't.

Suddenly, there is a black creature behind the criminal, and Will sees the antlers and hears the distorted voice: “You can do it. See?”

“No,” he shakes his head violently. “No, I can't, I won't be able to stop if I do it. I'm not allowed to listen to you. Go away.”

Will drops the gun, and the criminal fires at him and escapes.

The antler-man disappears again.

***

Will survives, but he knows he can never be a policeman again, so he becomes a teacher for the FBI.

He can teach his students everything about killers because he knows how killers think, knows why they do what they do.

Nobody realizes that he understands them because a part of him is like them.

The antler-man was the only one who did.

***

When Jack Crawford wants him to work in the field again, Will is scared.

Scared of seeing his imaginary friend again.

Scared of becoming insane.

He knows that Jack thinks he is unstable.

That's why he brings in this weird European psychiatrist.

Will dislikes him immediately, because he dislikes all psychiatrists and psychologists.

He knows it's crazy, but a part of him still believes that the antler-man was real and that they were the ones who chased him away.

But this psychiatrist is different.

Something is different about him, and Will isn't sure if in a good or a bad way.

Something about his voice, his face and the way he carries himself seems familiar, but Will doesn't know why.

He has never met this man before.

****

Will is in Hobbs' kitchen, shaking. 

He shot Hobbs, who collapsed and is sitting on the kitchen floor now, fatally injured, staring at something behind Will.

“See?” he says, “See?”

Will turns around and sees the antler-man, facing him.

“You did it,” the creature says, smiling. “See?”

Will ignores it and gets down on the floor, trying to stop Hobbs's daughter from bleeding out by putting his hands on her throat.

Then suddenly, the antler-man is gone, and the weird psychiatrist is next to Will and saves the girl's life.

***

Will is in the kitchen again, pointing a gun at the weird psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist's features become blurred, and he is transformed into something else.

His face becomes pitch-black, and antlers are growing from his head.

“I can see you now. And I know you killed all those people,” Will says, his voice trembling. “What are you?”

The creature smiles. “You know me. I'm your friend,” it says.

Will shakes his head. “No,” he says. “You are not. You are a monster, and you want to make me like you.”

He aims at the creature.

“You can't kill me without killing yourself,” the creature says. “We are two sides of the same coin. Don't you see, Will?”

Will fires at the antler-man, but Will is the one who falls to the ground, screaming with pain.

The creature is standing above him.

“I gave you a rare gift, but you didn't want it,” it says. “You didn't want to see.”

Will is sobbing because he knows that his friend is going to leave him again.

Will realizes that he doesn't want him to, even if he is a monster.

“That's not true,” he sobs. “I want your gift, and I want to see. Please don't leave.”

But the antler-man disappears.

Jack Crawford finds Will in the kitchen, lying on the floor.

He has no visible injuries, although he feels pain as if he's been shot.

They say his pain is psychosomatic and make him see a psychiatrist again.

Will doesn't tell anybody about the antler-man because they wouldn't believe him.

The weird European psychiatrist is gone. 

Jack Crawford finds out that Will was right about him.

The psychiatrist was a killer.

And he was a cannibal who ate his victims.

He made Will and Jack cannibals as well, inviting them for dinner and feeding them people without them knowing it.

They try to find and arrest him, but he disappeared without a trace.

Nobody knows where he came from.

They try to find out who he was, but it turns out that his whole identity, his name, his passport, his birth certificate, was fake.

Will often thinks about him at first, but then he tells himself to forget.

He has to if he doesn't want to become insane.

So he forgets.

He doesn't work for Jack Crawford again.

***

One night, a man comes to Will's house.

He doesn't have antlers, but Will knows he is a monster.

He breaks into the house and attacks Will.

And Will realizes the man is going to kill him if he doesn't fight back.

So Will is fighting for his life.

He lunges at the man, and the man grabs Will and tries to strangulate him.

Will is gasping for air and knows that he is going to die.

But he doesn't.

The antler-man is back.

He is standing next to Will, and he attacks the monster and bites out its throat.

Then he hands Will a knife, and Will guts the monster.

The monster falls to the ground and dies.

“See?” the antler-man says. “This is what I always wanted for you, Will. For both of us.”

Will smiles at the creature and hugs it. 

Now Will can see.

He sees the antler-man for what he is.

He is his imaginary friend.

He is a manifestation of Will's anger and aggression.

He is the weird European psychiatrist who came out of nowhere and disappeared without a trace and killed and ate people.

He is all of this and much more than this.

“It's beautiful. I'm so glad you came back,” Will says.

When he embraces the antler-man, he can feel antlers grow on his own head. 

He knows he is never going to be human again.

Will and the antler-man become one.

Will's antlers, his face and his body merge with the other man's, and he doesn't know anymore where he ends and where the antler-man begins.

They are conjoined.

And Will knows he is never going to be alone again.


End file.
